Mauve
by Ryuujitsu
Summary: Ryou finds purple eyeliner, Bakura plays with Ryou and said purple eyeliner.


mauve  
yuugiou fanfiction  
ryuujitsu & co.

Disclaimer: Saying Yuugiou belongs to us is like saying Kerry was elected today. Saying we wrote the lyrics of "Love Replica" is also like saying Kerry was elected today. Saying that we are crying for four more years of Bush and Cheney. . .is very true. _weep, weep_

A/N: Ryou finds purple eyeliner, Bakura plays with Ryou and said purple eyeliner. Drabble. For Melon, Itooshi, Sempai-tachi, and all other Kerry supporters. Squint for shounen-ai.

"_Toi, multiple, comme les dessins des ailes des papillons,  
__Loin, lequel, laquel;  
__Toi, tu es condense. . .tout ce qui à moi ne se fânera jamais,  
cette seule et unique beauté.  
__Tu m'as appris la jalousie. . ."_

- love replica, X Japan

Ryou found the eye pencil in his mother's room, hidden inside a faded book of butterflies and lost deep within a drawer. _Kattora._ It was as long as his thumb, blunt-tipped and mauve-colored, a hazy purplish shade that didn't run quite red but didn't go as far as black. He twisted it through a pencil sharpener and watched as the opaque lilac slivers crinkled away softly and floated to the floorboards.

His mother's mirror was breaking slowly; jagged sections had appeared and he saw a ghostly visage reflected twenty times over, kaleidoscopic, staring back at him.

The face in the cracked mirror was sharp and angular and white and not entirely his, but it looked like his mother, and he was satisfied. The half-moon bruises beneath his eyes were dusky and dry like lavender-hued flour, lighter than the pencil, though dark enough to contrast the bleak, plastic expanse of his skin.

It wasn't until the third tentative pencil stroke that Ryou realized his eyes matched the liner, that they were violently violet like impending storm clouds and that something was, therefore, very wrong.

_Silly boy. What are you up to?_

His hand fisted unwillingly around the pencil, the point trembled just below his silvery lashes at his left eye, and he didn't flinch, because he might gouge out this marvelously new eye in the process of flinching.

_Don't_, Ryou said weakly. _Don't. I want to. I'll do it right, I promise. Don't. Let me do it, please. _His fingers went limp, then taut, as he tried to release the pencil, tried to drop it and couldn't, and shook his wrist mentally. He realized his hands, like his new, wrong eyes, weren't his own anymore either.

_Let me._ A warning encased in midnight silk.

Ryou relinquished the pencil. It drew back from where it had been menacing his eye, slid down his cheek and across, once, twice. Halfway through the first horizontal strike, the tip snapped and tumbled away, and the wood of the pencil dragged a raw, purple-tinted scratch across his face.

Regretful, dark laughter echoed through the corridors of his mind. _Oops_.

His hands found the pencil sharpener. Fingers reached up and held his right eye open, while pencil traced the lower rim again and again, and turned it from pink to indigo. Ryou watched his body move like a spectator at a puppet show. _You used Master Puppeteer?_ he asked, more curious than sulkily resentful.

_Yes. Is this your mother's?_ A hand deftly added a tapered flicker of purple to the edge of the black-amethyst eye.

Ryou considered this. _I don't know. I found it in here, inside a book. Maybe it's Amane's._

_It's an odd color_. Thoughtful agreement._ I don't think your mother would have used it. Probably Amane, for the parties and the boys._ The pencil curved over his drooping upper eyelid in an oily line, fine purple powder dusting into his eyelashes and painting them vaguely blue.

_Amane isn't like that_, said Ryou quietly—angrily—and bristled. _Don't talk about her like that!_

_She was and don't deny it, you silly mortal fool. _The pencil bit into his skin harder than it should have; it leveled with his eye, poised at the iris, sharper now. It wasn't his eye, really, but—

_Don't._ His voice was weak again, anger gone. _I'm sorry. Please don't._

Another abrupt attack, thicker line now, under both unfamiliar eyes. _There. Finished. _Ryou watched as his body set the eye pencil back inside the drawer, nestling it carefully inside the butterfly book. A slow smile sounded in his mind; he felt a hand beneath his chin turning him back to the mirror. _Look. _The proud smile widened, a hand traced a fragment of shattering glass. _There are so many of you. Of me._

A pause. _Of us?_ Finished with uncertainty.

_Yes_, said Ryou. The face was softer now, rounded about the edges and not so gaunt around the cheekbones, with a dark swoop of color decorating each new eye. The accidental laceration in three-line pattern was reddened, blood welling up beyond the skin but not flowing. He wondered why he had never seen his mother use this pencil. Maybe it had been his sister's after all.

On impulse, Ryou added, _Thank you_.

The resulting smirk reverberated through his skull. His right hand pressed its cold fingertips to his slightly parted mouth, and breathed a kiss at the splintered mirror and his many reflections—breathed a kiss at him.

_tu sais. . .je t'aime_

A/N: Kattora is an eye/eyebrow pencil of Japanese manufacture, I think. I'm also pretty sure Amane was older than Ryou. She didn't have to be the perfect older sister to be idolized by her younger brother, and Ryou obsesses over both his deceased mother and sister.

Translation for above: _You multiply like the pictures of butterfly wings/far, which, that which/you are condensed/all that is mine will never fade away, this unique and only beauty/you taught me jealousy. . .you know. . .I love you. . ._


End file.
